Latest technology

2008-04-19T12:15:00.001-07:00

Belkin Mouse Trap: Mouse Pouch And Mouse Pad In One

2008-04-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Mouse Trap by Belkin is an absolutely wonderful way of carrying your laptop mouse with you. When zipped, the Mouse Trap lets you store within it your favorite mouse and accessories. But upon unzipping it, the little pouch turns into a handy mouse pad. How smart!

O2 Cocoon Designer Cellphone

2008-04-19T11:51:00.001-07:00

O2 Cocoon is the latest on the growing list of designer cellphones. Phones that do not offer much in terms of feature, but sport really nice designs, such as the Nokia 8600 Luna, Nokia 8800, and the Vertu series. This one stands out from the crowd though, with its clean curves and attractive black-and-white color scheme. It’s hard not to like the looks of it!

Apple iMac: New Look & New Specs, Starts At $1,199

2008-04-19T11:48:00.001-07:00

The Pretty

The most obvious cosmetic changes are the inclusion of black and the change from plastic to aluminum and glass. Following the style of the iPhone, the new iMac sports a black bezel and a black Apple logo on its silver aluminum exterior.

The new keyboard is equally sweet! With a super-low profile compared to the previous model, it provides a more laptop-like typing experience. It comes in wired and wireless versions, with the wired offering two USB ports and the wireless having a sleek power button at the side.

The tech specs are just as amazing. 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme processor, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphics, support for up to 1TB of storage, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.0, 8x SuperDrives, and 1GB of RAM.

And after watching BBC’s Planet Earth, I’m now truly appreciative of environmental friendly products. I’m glad that Apple is now emphasizing on this aspect, and the new iMacs are made out of highly recyclable materials.

Nokia N81: Music Junkies Will Love This Phone

2008-04-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

Unlike the N9x series cellphones which are designed for multimedia of all sorts, the new Nokia N81 is focused on music. It does not have any fancy Carl Zeiss lens or GPS, but it does sport really loud stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack, 8GB of internal memory for all your tunes, 3G, and WiFi.

It can be a decent gaming phone too, with its support for landscape orientation games and a D-pad suited for gaming.

Lastly, the Nokia N81 is configured to find and buy music and games from the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage games service. Sounds like a great integrated entertainment solution.

Nokia Recalls 300 Million Batteries. Is Yours OK?

2008-04-19T11:42:00.001-07:00

Nokia has announced a recall of 300 million of its batteries, which are manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006. This is due to over 100 overheating reports from around the world.

Fret not, HipTech readers never get cellphones exploding on them.

Affected model: Nokia BL-5C battery

This battery is used in the following

Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100c, Nokia 1101, Nokia 1108, Nokia 1110, Nokia 1112, Nokia 1255, Nokia 1315, Nokia 1600, Nokia 2112, Nokia 2118, Nokia 2255, Nokia 2272, Nokia 2275, Nokia 2300, Nokia 2300c, Nokia 2310, Nokia 2355, Nokia 2600, Nokia 2610, Nokia 2610b, Nokia 2626, Nokia 3100, Nokia 3105, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3125, Nokia 6030, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6086, Nokia 6108, Nokia 6175i, Nokia 6178i, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6230i, Nokia 6270, Nokia 6600, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6631, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 6820, Nokia 6822, Nokia 7610, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia N72, Nokia N91, Nokia E50, Nokia E60

Charge your iPhone and iPod On The Move

2008-04-19T11:40:00.001-07:00

To stay loyal to the Apple gods means you have to live with the non-removable batteries on your iPods and iPhones. Bringing the USB cable along with you everywhere is good if you expect to have computer access to get some charge from its USB port, but not too helpful if you are out, let’s say, on a safari. In that case, the RichardSolo Smart Backup Battery is an indispensable accessory.

Motorala's treasure,EMEA chief of mobile devices replaced

2008-03-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

Merely days after Stu Reed racked up as he waltzed out of Motorola's doors for the final time, and nary a fortnight after the same firm's chief marketing officer did the same, along comes word that two more bigwigs have now left the building. Effective immediately, Larry R. Raymond has replaced Steve Strobel as treasurer, while Stephen Nolan "is taking over as the head of mobile devices in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA)" -- a position that was held by Mike Fenger just last week. According to a company spokeswoman, the "leadership changes are part of an overall plan to swiftly transform the senior executive team." Hey, if it's lookin' for turnover, it's certainly doing something right.

Eject Powerstrip concept gives your foot a workout

2008-03-17T13:05:00.001-07:00

Apparently, traditional powerstrips are in dire need of an overhaul, as the Eject Powerstrip is just one of many replacement concepts we've seen float by in the past several months. Nevertheless, this brilliantly engineered design essentially allows users to eject plugs leading to devices not currently in use in order to keep consumption of "vampire power" to a minimum. Additionally, any ejected socket is automatically turned off in order to keep your meddling youngsters safe from electrocution. Now, if only we weren't so ashamed about leaving our current strips out in the open, we'd really be infatuated with this idea.

Polaroid intros 60 GB Freespace 4360 WiFi-enabled PMP

2008-03-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

If you were wondering if you'd ever hear another peep about that Freescape digital media ecosystem that Polaroid trumpeted in January, here's your answer. Quietly launched on the firm's own website, the Freescape 4360 (also known as the MPU-043315B) is a WiFi-enabled portable media player packin' a 60GB hard drive, a rechargeable Li-ion good for 16 hours of audio playback (just 4 hours with video), a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 resolution LCD, an FM tuner, TV output and support for MPEG4, WMA, WMV, MP3 and JPEG formats. Mum's the word on a price or release date, but without handling a few more formats, we can't see any Archos / Cowon / iriver lovers switching sides for this.

Quickertek antenna promises to boost Time capsule's range

2008-03-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

It won't do much to complement the Time Capsule's minimalist looks, but if you've been itching to get a bit more range of out thing, you now have a new option to consider from Quickertek, which recently introduced its new TriBand Antenna for the device. Available either as a self-install kit or pre-installed on the Time Capsule of your choice, the slightly janky-looking rig promises a 50% increase in range over a standard Time Capsule, with ample coaxial cabling provided to let you position it just right. As if that wasn't enough, Quickertek is also promising that the antenna will let you reach speeds "much closer to the theoretical yield of 300 megabits per second," although it apparently isn't making any firm claims on that matter. If that sounds like the boost you've been looking for, you can grab the self-install kit now for $130, get Quickertek to install the antenna on your existing Time Capsule for $200, or get a 500GB or 1TB Time Capsule with it pre-installed for $500 or $700, respectively.

Vista sp1 officially coming tomorrow ??

2008-03-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

It's already got its own toilet paper in Japan, but the rest of us are still patiently waiting for Vista SP1 to officially hit -- but maybe not for much longer: DailyTech is reporting that SP1 will be available for download starting tomorrow, with boxed copies to follow on store shelves Wednesday. While Microsoft's PR team wouldn't confirm anything other than "on track for mid-March" to The Register, it seems the company has been a little more forthcoming with its pals at Amazon, which is also listing March 18th as the release date for SP1. That's some fishy fish, but there's only one way to find out for reals -- nap time, here we come.

Toshiba sued for cloning fujitsu's Raku Raku Handset

2008-03-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

It's fairly commonplace for Chinese manufacturers to crank out clones of other popular wares, but apparently, things aren't brushed off as easily when the cloning gets done by a mega-corp like Toshiba. Granted, quite a bit is lost in translation here, but the long and short of it is that NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu are suing Tosh for creating and selling its 821T -- which, as you can see above, looks an awful lot like Fujitsu's RakuRaku handset. Reportedly, the plaintiffs have demanded that Softbank Mobile withdraw the 821T from the market, but it seems there's quite a bit more back-and-forth left to go down before the dust settles on this one.

Samsang said to be pepping lower cost education minded Q ultra

2008-03-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

Samsung's already busted out a handful of different Q1 Ultra models, but it looks like it's now come up with yet another variation to throw out there, this one aimed at the education market. According to Pocket-lint, Samsung is dishing out this latest incarnation in order to compete with Asus' upcoming 9-inch, Windows-based Eee PC, although it's not quite going head-to-head with it in terms of price, with this particular model apparently set to demand £399 (or just over $800) when it hits the UK next month (no word on a release 'round these parts). While complete specs are still a bit light at the moment, the new Q1 will apparently drop the spiffy dual camera and cut back on the hard drive to keep the cost down.